Bridging the Knowledge Gap

Fashion Consort News Bytes

Fashion as an academic discipline is relatively new. It’s not to say that people haven’t been researching the intersection of clothing and economics, clothing and psychology, or clothing and culture--to name a few--for quite some time, rather that it hasn't been taken seriously as its own discipline. However, with formalization of fashion as a discipline within the academy, and the growth in graduate level programs, there has been a surge of fashion-specific research both by faculty and students.

And because this research isn’t necessarily tied to a company’s success--meaning that it’s not research being done as part of one’s job, or in service of a client--this has provided more opportunity to research without a required or expected outcome. In short, it has allowed for more direct critique of the fashion system. It’s no surprise then, that a correlation can be drawn between the growth of fashion research and a growth of interest in subjects such as sustainability, human rights and EISJ. These topics are consistently in the top five when it comes to student research.

Over time, these areas of academic focus have shifted from the institution to the industry, for two reasons: 1) students are graduating with these topics being front and center in their learning and 2) the more educated people become, the more they demand change from companies. However, this process has been slow and highlights the lack of direct collaboration between academia and industry.

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